In 2026, I will have several new books available for purchase, including a book on aging. Here is an excerpt from that book. I’m still looking for titles, but kind of leaning toward “Did I Just Pee on My Foot?” What do you think?
Assisting the Elderly
My wife likes her conveniences, one of which is a remote switch for her bedside lamp. Sort of a modern version of the Clapper. This way, she doesn’t have to reach up to turn her lamp on and off manually, but merely click the remote.
She bought a remote device online some years ago and eventually, the thing gave out with a mighty whoosh. Not knowing at first what the problem was, I took apart the lamp to see if there was a short somewhere. Finding none, I realized that it was the remote switch that would have to be replaced. I headed off to Home Depot to get a new switch so that everything would be set right in the house.
As I searched the aisles, it became clear that I didn’t quite know if I should be looking in the lighting section, the electronics section, or some other place. I decided to go looking for an associate to help me. Now, most of the time, I’ll find someone my age or older wearing an orange apron and spending their golden years explaining the difference between watts and ohms. This time I happened upon a younger person, maybe in his early twenties. He wasn’t quite sure what I was talking about but thought that he knew where to look. We headed for the lighting section of the store.
There at the end of an aisle, was a selection of remotes for ceiling fans and, finally, one for a lamp. This one was different than my wife’s original. Rather than using an RF signal (Radio Frequency) to get the switch and the remote plug to talk to each other, this one was wireless and relied on Bluetooth technology. ‘Cool,’ I thought to myself. ‘Even better.’ Then it happened.
“Do you know how this works?” the kid asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
“It’s Bluetooth enabled,” he reiterated.
“I can see that,” I countered.
“You have to use your smartphone or tablet to use this.” He continued. “Do you have a smartphone?”
I pulled my Android phone out of my back pocket and waved it at him.
“You’ll have to download an app for this device,” he said. “Do you know what an app is?”
He twisted the device between his thumb and forefinger and smiled at me as if I were a kindergartener learning the alphabet.
“You can get the app by scanning this QR code with your phone. Do you know how a QR code works?”
I could hold back no longer.
“Listen, genius. My generation invented computers, the internet, smartphones and applications for them. As long as the instructions aren’t in Chinese, I’m pretty sure I can figure it out.”
He got that ‘Why are old people so hostile?’ look on his face, handed me the device and walked away. I took it home, told my wife that they no longer made her device but that the newer ones now were operated via Bluetooth. “Cool,” she responded and had the device set up in a few minutes.
This is not the first time that something like this has happened to me. I went to the supermarket to purchase some disposable diapers for a friend whose daughter had just had a baby. Again, I asked for help in locating the item from a young person who led me straight to the adult incontinence section of the store where I found myself staring at an aisle of Depends and similar undergarments. The kid beamed at me like a boy scout helping an old lady across the street.
Why are old people so hostile? Because we are so often treated like children. Like we don’t know things. Like the world has passed us by. There is a vast difference between my generation and the generations before mine. Our generation happened to live through one of the most fertile technological eras in the history of mankind. We had to adapt to changes every couple of years. Comedienne Rita Rudner used to say that she was not buying another piece of new technology until they promised her that it would be the last piece of technology she would ever have to buy.
In my lifetime, music has gone from vinyl to reel to reel magnetic tape to eight track tapes to cassette to CD to digital audio and now, back to vinyl. We have gone from film to video tape to DVD to digital video. My first computer was an 8-bit Commodore Vic 20 that you hooked up to your analog television set and stored programs on a cassette tape. It cost me $300.00, and I had to learn computer languages like BASIC and C++. I owned computers that ran on DOS, the Disk Operating System. Later still, I learned a host of other separate computer languages and skills that I passed on to my children.
I had to learn how to build a website using HTML coding, how to create a phone app, Someday, I will be wearing an orange apron explaining to some kid the difference between HTML and XMHL.
Every year from October to December, the insurance companies bombard old people with commercials touting their supplemental insurance plans. They range from the childish to the ridiculous. One plan has a woman screaming at her husband that they need to sign up because Medicare parts A and C are not enough. Most pitchmen and women make sure that they repeat the main points of the plan three to five times during the course of one short commercial. Older celebrities are employed so that we can see that there’s no shame in signing up for Medicare. If Joe Namath has signed up for supplemental insurance, it must be an okay plan. What these companies fail to realize is that what we get from that is that Broadway Joe must not have managed his money very well if he’s had to resort to being a huckster for an insurance company.
Senior living communities are by far the worst with their dietary restrictions, forced recreation periods and social programming to keep the old folks’ minds sharp. What if someone doesn’t want to work on a puzzle? What if someone wants to sit and watch television like they have done for the past few decades? At the moment, I play music for people in a retirement community. These people are on lockdown, incarcerated in a memory unit because they suffer from dementia or early onset Alzheimer’s. The company that hired me to play music sent me a list of songs that they believed old people wanted to hear, and I dutifully complied. I played songs like This Land is Your Land, Sentimental Journey and You are My Sunshine. The residents sat there dutifully listening until one day when someone spoke up.
“We like country music,” came the stern command.
I switched, playing some of the country songs that I know and the people listening suddenly became more animated. One of the songs I sing occasionally is Marty Robbins’ El Paso. There are 456 words in that song, and I have to have it written down for me so that I can get all the words right. My audience, despite not being able to remember where they are or where they are from know and sing every single word to that song. After that first lesson, I ask what they wanted to hear and learned the songs so I could play them for these nice folks. They might be old, but they still know what they want and what they want is to be treated with respect.
I have one message for everyone younger than me. Stop treating old people like children.
Copyright 2026 by Jose Antonio Ponce